Individual wholeness, family, and the holidays

A Christian Science perspective: Healing thoughts about family relationships

Emotions can run high during the holiday season, especially when it comes to thoughts of family. Often, such feelings – whether they are pleasant or unpleasant, happy or sad, self-concerned or concerned for the welfare and happiness of others – are linked to how secure or insecure we may feel about our own worth and ability in relation to others.

What’s really capable of making us feel confident within ourselves, and with our family members, is to understand the spiritual wholeness we have individually and collectively as members within the one universal family of God. That’s something we can turn our thought to, cherish in our hearts, and celebrate today – and bring with us during the holidays and beyond.

Christ Jesus was so crystal clear concerning his own identity as the Son of God that he was able to awaken within others the understanding of their own cherished worth and identity as God’s children. Others in the Bible caught the spirit of this message, as we read in Ephesians: “For this cause I bow my knees unto the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ of whom the whole family in heaven and earth is named, that he would grant you, according to the riches of his glory, to be strengthened with might by his Spirit in the inner man” (Ephesians 3:14-16). The divine Spirit, the infinite God, is the Father and Mother of you and everyone. As the Bible declares in Genesis and elsewhere, we are God’s spiritual image and likeness, reflecting His purity, wholeness, and perfection. As God’s offspring, our heritage is divine, and no other relationship or circumstance can alter our relationship to Him. This truth is here for us to discern and live now and forever; it is the Christ message, the same truth Jesus lived and taught.

The desire to hear the Christ message comes from our God-given faith in the power of good. Many were attracted to Jesus because they simply wanted to be healed. But others, having an innate desire for genuine spiritual good, were attracted to him because they were receptive to Christ and its healing power. To a man who came to thank Jesus for healing him of leprosy, Jesus said, “Arise, go thy way: thy faith hath made thee whole” (Luke 17:19). His faith had awakened him to his wholeness as God’s child.

With our faith in good, you and I can listen for the ideas Christ, Truth, is imparting to us. Then we, too, can be made whole and arise and go our way. Healings are proof of the wholeness we have forever had as the image and likeness of God. The writings of Mary Baker Eddy on the Science of Christianity have been invaluable to me in pursuing this truth. Christian Science teaches that whatever is unlike good, unlike God, is untrue – an error of thought regarding God and His creation – and that correcting these errors through a higher understanding of our God-given selfhood restores what we thought was missing, and we experience more of our eternal perfection. Here’s a statement of Mrs. Eddy’s that deserves our thoughtful attention: “Man is the family name for all ideas, – the sons and daughters of God. All that God imparts moves in accord with Him, reflecting goodness and power” (“Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures,” p. 515). We need to nurture a keen sensitivity to the goodness of God and see it in ourselves as well as in everyone else.

Here’s an example: I was moving with my husband and son to a town where my older sister lived with her family. Now I had always loved my sister, but we had not lived anywhere near each other since we became adults. In anticipation of our move the thought came to me, “Do I have to be a little sister again?” The suggestion was that I would feel somewhat demoted in my sense of worth around my big sister. As a Christian Scientist, though, I understood that we each had equal value in the eyes of God, so I settled that question right then in my own thought. I reasoned that as whole and equally valuable individuals – each of us being the spiritual expression of God – we had the natural ability to simply be good friends with a mutual appreciation for one another. And that’s the way it was – and is.

When we listen to God’s voice concerning our worth as His children, the grace of God works in us to bring out the best in others and in ourselves. Whether during the holidays or any other time, through the grace of God working in us our days can become holy days of progress and healing. Now that’s something to celebrate!

You've read  of  free articles. Subscribe to continue.
Real news can be honest, hopeful, credible, constructive.
What is the Monitor difference? Tackling the tough headlines – with humanity. Listening to sources – with respect. Seeing the story that others are missing by reporting what so often gets overlooked: the values that connect us. That’s Monitor reporting – news that changes how you see the world.

Dear Reader,

About a year ago, I happened upon this statement about the Monitor in the Harvard Business Review – under the charming heading of “do things that don’t interest you”:

“Many things that end up” being meaningful, writes social scientist Joseph Grenny, “have come from conference workshops, articles, or online videos that began as a chore and ended with an insight. My work in Kenya, for example, was heavily influenced by a Christian Science Monitor article I had forced myself to read 10 years earlier. Sometimes, we call things ‘boring’ simply because they lie outside the box we are currently in.”

If you were to come up with a punchline to a joke about the Monitor, that would probably be it. We’re seen as being global, fair, insightful, and perhaps a bit too earnest. We’re the bran muffin of journalism.

But you know what? We change lives. And I’m going to argue that we change lives precisely because we force open that too-small box that most human beings think they live in.

The Monitor is a peculiar little publication that’s hard for the world to figure out. We’re run by a church, but we’re not only for church members and we’re not about converting people. We’re known as being fair even as the world becomes as polarized as at any time since the newspaper’s founding in 1908.

We have a mission beyond circulation, we want to bridge divides. We’re about kicking down the door of thought everywhere and saying, “You are bigger and more capable than you realize. And we can prove it.”

If you’re looking for bran muffin journalism, you can subscribe to the Monitor for $15. You’ll get the Monitor Weekly magazine, the Monitor Daily email, and unlimited access to CSMonitor.com.

QR Code to Individual wholeness, family, and the holidays
Read this article in
https://www.csmonitor.com/Commentary/A-Christian-Science-Perspective/2014/1226/Individual-wholeness-family-and-the-holidays
QR Code to Subscription page
Start your subscription today
https://www.csmonitor.com/subscribe